Rings of Power

Unlike the other Rings of Power, the One was created as an unadorned gold band, though it bore Sauron's incantation, the Rhyme of the Rings, in the Black Speech; it became visible only when heated, whether by fire or by Sauron's hand.[T 6] As the other Rings were made under the influence of Sauron, the power of all the Rings depended on the One Ring's survival.[2][T 9] To make the One Ring, Sauron had to put almost all his power into it—when worn, it enhanced his power; unworn, it remained aligned to him unless another seized it and took control of it.[T 10] A prospective possessor could, if sufficiently strong, overthrow Sauron and usurp his place; but they would become as evil as him.[T 10] As the One was made in the fires of Mount Doom, it could only be unmade there.[T 7] Sauron, being evil, never imagined that anyone might try to destroy the One Ring, as he imagined that anyone bearing it would be corrupted by it.[T 10]

The Rings of Power, their stones, and their bearers[T 2]

Named for the three elements of fire, water, and air, the Three were the last to be made before Sauron's solo creation of the One. While Celebrimbor forged the Three Rings alone in Eregion, they were moulded by Sauron's craft and were bound to the One.[T 1] Only after Sauron's defeat, when the One Ring was cut from his finger at the end of the Second Age, did the Elves begin to actively use the Three to ward off the decay brought by time.[T 2] After the One Ring, they are the most powerful of the twenty Rings of Power.[T 11] They are:

• Narya (the Ring of Fire, the Red Ring), from Quenya nár, "fire",[T 12] was set with a ruby. Its metal is not stated. It gave its wielder resistance to the weariness of time, and evoked hope in others. Its final bearer was the Wizard Gandalf, who received it from Círdan at the Grey Havens during the Third Age. [T 4]
• Nenya (the Ring of Water, the White Ring, the Ring of Adamant), from Quenya nén, "water",[T 13] was made of mithril and set with a "shimmering white stone". Galadriel used it to protect and preserve the realm of Lothlórien.[T 2] "Adamant" means both a type of stone, usually a diamond, and "stubbornly resolute", a description that equally well suits the quality of Galadriel's resistance to Sauron.[3]

• Vilya (the Ring of Air, the Blue Ring), from Quenya vilya, "air",[T 14] was the mightiest of the Three. It was made of gold and set with a sapphire. Elrond inherited Vilya from Gil-galad and used it to safeguard Rivendell.[T 2]

Sauron recovered the Seven Rings from information provided by Celebrimbor, and gave them to the leaders of the seven kindreds of the Dwarves: Durin's Folk (Longbeards), Firebeards, Broadbeams, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks, and Stonefoots,[4] though a tradition of Durin's Folk claimed that Durin received his ring from the Elven-smiths.[T 15][T 1] Over the years, Sauron was able to recover only three of the Seven rings from the Dwarves. The last of the three was seized from Thráin II during his captivity in Dol Guldur. Gandalf recounts to Frodo that the remaining four were consumed by dragons.[T 6] Before the outbreak of the War of the Ring, an envoy from Sauron attempted to bribe Dain II Ironfoot of the Lonely Mountain with the three surviving rings and the lost realm of Moria in exchange for information leading to the recovery of the One Ring, but Dain refused.[T 7]

Sauron gave Nine of the Rings of Power to leaders of Men, who became "mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old". They gained unending lifespans, and the ability to see things in worlds invisible to mortal Men.[T 2] One by one, the Men fell to the power of the One Ring; by the end of the Second Age, all nine had become invisible ring-wraiths – the Nazgûl, Sauron's most terrible servants. In particular, they helped him search for the One Ring, to which they were powerfully attracted.[T 16]

The One Ring first appeared in Tolkien's children's fantasy The Hobbit in 1937 as a plot device, a mysterious magic ring which the titular character had stumbled upon, but its origin was left unexplained.[8] Following the novel's success, Tolkien was persuaded by his publishers Allen & Unwin to write a sequel.[T 22][9] Intending to give Bilbo another adventure, he instead devised a background story around the Ring with its power of invisibility, forming a framework for the new work.[T 23] He tied the Ring to mythical elements from the unfinished manuscripts for The Silmarillion to create an impression of depth in The Lord of the Rings.[10] Gollum's characterisation in The Hobbit was revised for the second edition to bring it into line with his portrayal in The Lord of the Rings as a being addicted to the One Ring.[T 24]

Tolkien's conception of Ring-lore was closely linked to his development of the One Ring.[11] He initially made Sauron instrumental in forging the Rings.[T 25] He then briefly considered having Fëanor, creator of the Silmarils, forge the Rings of Power, under the influence of Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. He settled on Celebrimbor, a descendant of Fëanor, as the Ring's principal maker, under the tutelage of Sauron, Morgoth's chief servant.[T 26] While writing the lore behind the One Ring, Tolkien struggled with giving the Elven rings a "special status" – somehow linked to the One, and thus endangered by it, but also "unsullied", having no direct connection with Sauron.[12] By the time he was writing the chapter "The Mirror of Galadriel", Tolkien had decided that the Seven and the Nine were made by the Elven-smiths of Eregion under Sauron's guidance and that the Three were made by Celebrimbor alone.[12] He considered setting the Three free from the One when it was destroyed but dropped the idea.[12] Tolkien's posthumous works, including The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth offer further glimpses of the creation of the Rings.[T 1][T 27][T 28]

Jason Fisher, writing in Tolkien Studies, notes that Tolkien developed the names, descriptions and powers of the Three Rings late and slowly through many drafts of his narratives. In Fisher's view, Tolkien found it difficult to work these Rings both into the existing story of the One Ring, and into the enormous but Ring-free Legendarium.[13] Some of the descriptions, such as that Vilya was the mightiest of the Three, and that Narya was called "The Great", were added at the galley proof stage, just before printing.[13][14] The Rings had earlier been named Kemen, Ëar, and Menel, meaning the Rings of Earth, Sea, and Heaven.[15]

According to Johann Köberl, Tolkien struggled with the notion of a "special status" for the Elven-Rings, and considered having The Three set free when the One Ring was destroyed.[12] In an unused draft by Tolkien, Galadriel counselled Celebrimbor to destroy all the Rings when Sauron's deception was revealed, but when he could not bear to ruin them, she suggested that the Three be hidden.[T 4][T 29] According to Unfinished Tales, at the start of the War of the Elves and Sauron, Celebrimbor gave both Narya and Vilya to Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor. Gil-galad later entrusted Vilya to his lieutenant Elrond, and Narya to Círdan the Shipwright, Lord of the Havens of Mithlond and leader of the Falathrim or "People of the Shore".[16] Tolkien suggested that Sauron did not discover where the Three were hidden, though he guessed that they were given to Gil-galad and Galadriel.[T 29] In the published The Lord of the Rings, Gil-galad received only Vilya, while Círdan was the direct recipient of Narya from Celebrimbor.

Tolkien noted in his letters that the primary power of the Three was to "the prevention and slowing of decay", which appealed to the Elves in their pursuit of preserving what they loved in Middle-earth.[1][T 30] As changeless beings in a changing world, the Elves who remained in Middle-earth relied on the Three to delay the inevitable rise of the Dominion of Men.[1][T 31][T 18] Tolkien explained that the Elves can only be immortal as long as the world endures, leading them to be concerned to burdens of deathlessness in time and change. Wanting the bliss and perfect memory of Valinor, and yet to remain in Middle-earth with their prestige as the fairest, as opposed to being at the bottom of the hierarchy in the Undying Lands, they became obsessed with "fading".[T 32]

Imagemap with clickable links. Apparent influence of archaeological and philological work at Nodens' Temple on Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium[17]

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey thought that Tolkien's work on a Latin inscription at a Roman temple at Lydney Park a "pivotal" influence, combining as it did a god-hero, a ring, dwarves, and a silver hand. The god-hero was Nodens, whom Tolkien traced to the Irish hero Nuada Airgetlám, "Nuada of the Silver-Hand", and the inscription carried a curse on a stolen ring. "Silver-Hand" is the English translation of "Celebrimbor", the Elven-smith who made the Rings of Power, in association with the Dwarven-smith Narvi. The temple was at a place called Dwarf's Hill.[T 33][18][17][19][20]

Magical rings occur in classical legend, in the form of Plato's Ring of Gyges which grants the power of invisibility to its wearer, though there is no suggestion that this influenced Tolkien.[21] He was certainly influenced, however, by the Germanic legend: Andvaranaut is a magical ring that can give its wielder wealth, while Draupnir is a self-multiplying ring that holds dominion over all the rings it creates. Richard Wagner's opera series Der Ring des Nibelungen adapted Norse mythology to provide a magical but cursed golden ring.[22] Tolkien denied any connection, but scholars agreed that Wagner's Ring powerfully influenced Tolkien.[23] The scholar of religion Stefan Arvidsson writes that Tolkien's ring differs from Wagner's in being concerned with power for its own sake and that he turned one ring into many, an echo of the self-multiplying ring.[23]

"Magic rings are a frequent motif in fairy tales; they confer powers such as invisibility or flight; they can summon wish-granting djinns and dwarves", writes the Tolkien and feminist scholar Melanie Rawls "identify the enchanted princess, hold the tiny golden key to the secret room, give one the power to transform oneself into any form — animal, vegetable, or mineral: duck, lake, rock or tree on a plain, and so escape the ogre."[24] As Tolkien was well acquainted with fairy tales like The Brothers Grimm's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which involves a magic ring, Jeanette White from Comic Book Resources suggested that his choice "to gift seven rings of power to the Dwarf Lords of the seven kingdoms is probably no accident".[25][26]

According to the scholars of philosophy Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson, the Rings of Power can be seen as a modern representation of the relationship between power and morality, remarking that it portrays an idea that "absolute power is in conflict with behaviour that respects the wishes and needs of others".[5] They also observed that several of Tolkien's characters have responded in different ways when faced with the possibility of possessing the One Ring—characters such as Samwise Gamgee and Galadriel have rejected it; Boromir and Gollum were seduced by its power; and Frodo Baggins, though in limited use, ultimately succumbs to it; while Tom Bombadil can transcend from its power entirely.[5] They also noted that for Tolkien, the crucial moment of each character in the story is the moment in which they are tempted to use a Ring, a choice which will determine their fate.[27] The science fiction author Isaac Asimov described the Rings of Power as symbols of industrial technology.[28][29] While Tolkien denied that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory, he stated that it could be applied to situations and described it as an examination of "placing power in external objects".[1]

In a 2019 article published by Kaspersky Lab, Nikolay Pankov analysed Sauron's efforts to dominate or ensnare the bearers of the Rings of Power from a modern perspective, with reference to the context of Tolkien's enthusiasm in the field of cryptanalysis as well as his participation in a language course run by the Government Code and Cypher School during the late 1930s.[30][31][32][33] Pankov used analogies to real-world information security terms such as supply chain attacks, phishing techniques, and botnet software to describe the struggles between Sauron and the various Ring-bearers who are representatives of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth.[31]

Gwyneth Hood, writing in Mythlore, explores two Catholic elements in the story of the Three Rings: the angelic and sacrificial aspects of the elves in the War of the Ring. To the hobbits of the Fellowship of the Ring, the elven Ring-bearers appear as angelic messengers, offering wise counsel. To save Middle-earth, they have to accept the plan to destroy the One Ring, and with it, the power of the Three Rings, which embody much of their own power. Hood notes that while Gandalf as one of the supernatural Maiar sent from Valinor is "remarkably unlike an elf",[34] out of the wielders of the Three Rings he is the character who most closely combines the angelic and the sacrificial.[34] The poet W. H. Auden, an early supporter of Lord of the Rings, wrote in the Tolkien Journal that good triumphs over evil in the War of the Ring, but the Three Rings lose their power, as Galadriel had prophesied: "If you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tide of time will sweep it away".[35] Hood further writes that Tolkien was suggesting technology such as the making of Rings of Power is in itself neither good nor evil; both the Elves and Sauron (with his armies of orcs) use that technology, as they also both make and wear swords and mail armour, and shoot with bows.[34]